Nature Play Along the Way for All Ages

In 1997 I entered the field of environmental education as a field trip leader for a 2000-acre suburban wildlife sanctuary. As I sat through the training, I realized that third graders knew more about the natural world than I did. As a kid I rode my bike up and down the street for endless hours. As a preteen, I walked with a friend around the field that was her backyard. Aside from worrying that snakes were going to bite me, I didn’t give much thought about nature.

As an adult though, a new world opened up as I joined nature walks and learned the names of small green plants and shrubs and trees. I learned about the secret worlds of amphibians and arthropods, birds and mammals. The more I read and the more I learned in informal classes and workshops, the more things made sense. Instead of facts, nature was a story. People and plants and animals and even rocks were interconnected.

Teaching classes helped me to process what I learned. However, working with kids isn’t just about conveying facts. It is about getting them to interact with nature. So, as I became involved in the day camp at the wildlife sanctuary I started reading books describing activities adults could guide kids through outdoors.

I collected hundreds of activities and variations on those activities. I kept meaning to turn them into a book, but the format was never clear – should I gear the book for kids, for parents, for teachers … who? Every time I sat down, I tweaked the format and my notes became more and more disorganized. During that time, my mother required more help and then spent years going in and out of hospitals and nursing homes until she died; my work schedule changed and then changed again (and then changed again); I moved three times in three years after previously living at one address for years and years; I met a man, fell in love, and married him; I changed my career from teacher to writer; I helped my father get by living on his own until he had to move into assisted living, which hasn’t yet made things easier because now I’m cleaning the house – and my parents never got rid of anything (even empty boxes).

Before the end of September, my Nature Play Along the Way series will be e-published and available through BarnesandNoble.com. The series will consist of
Games on the Go – Walking Games for Parents and Kids
Nature Play Along the Way for PreK – K
Nature Play Along the Way for Grades 1 & 2
Nature Play Along the Way for Grades 3 & 5
Nature Play Along the Way for Teachers (Activities that require eight or more kids)

Each book guides adults, be they parents, grandparents, teachers, scout leaders, youth group leaders, camp counselors, or afterschool teachers through nature activities that they can do with children, even if the adults don’t have a background in environmental education, science, nature, etc.

Why mention the books now? Well, as I mentioned, I’ve been working on the books on and off for years and I need an incentive to finish them. Telling ‘the world’ is (with hope) that push I need to write, revise, and edit this series. So, get set to explore ….

Take Your Teddy Bear for a Walk

Chances are that your kids have indoor toys and outdoor toys. However, they can liven up their outdoor play by taking some of those indoor toys outside. This may actually encourage children to play outside, particularly if they thought that the only way they could play with certain items was to do so inside.

If your child likes playing dress up, then dressing up like a fairy or a knight takes on a whole new level when the child can bestow fairy magic to the flowers in the garden or the child can sneak among the trees and shrubs in search of dragons and evildoers.

Barbie may enjoy a boating expedition down a slow-moving stream. Invite stuffed animals to a picnic under the backyard tree instead of keeping them cooped up inside waiting for high tea. Action figures may encounter more action among grass and fallen branches than they’d ever come across in the land of carpeting and dining room chair legs.

Okay, building toys like K’nex or Lego probably won’t manage grass and dirt without a number of pieces going missing. However, if your child hasn’t played with a toy for months, see if taking it outside gives the item a second life.

Work jigsaw puzzles on a piece of plywood. Draw, color, paint, or work on activity books outside at a picnic table.

Taking indoor toys outside just might spark your children’s imaginations and creativity.

Puddle Science for Kids

If there’s a puddle, most kids will gravitate toward it. A few kids will hold back but oftentimes that is because of fear of mom or dad’s wrath with wet or muddy clothes. Pull out some old, stained, or never-quite-right clothing from your child’s wardrobe and designate them outdoor play clothes if, as mom or dad (or the adult who hands kids off to mom and dad) you are concerned with seeing grass stains and mud across the knees of a pair of jeans.

Spring and summer are great times of year to explore puddles because the weather is warmer and there is less chance of getting chilled. Rain boots are perfect for splashing around; although, an old pair of sneakers is fine as well. Raincoats can be hot and some kids are happier without a coat – if they can go inside and change into dry clothing after time outside, then kids don’t have to deal with the restriction of not getting wet.

Some kids will go outside and feel right at home exploring and playing in puddles. If your child is weather-wary, join them outdoors and guide them through a few simple activities.

Water Activities
If it is raining, watch the way the drops interact with the surface. Children will learn to look outside on a rainy day and predict how hard it is rainy by watching droplets hit the puddles.

Try floating leaves on puddles. Children will see how the depth of water affects the way the leaf boats can move.

Gather a collection of dry twigs (or use craft sticks) and measure the depth of a few puddles. Can the children hypothesize why some puddles are deeper than others?

Splash! Toss different objects into puddles of different depths. What reaction can kids get from a leaf, an acorn, a pebble, or even themselves! Watch for splash patterns. Kids may even want to measure the depth of water in a puddle after they’ve jumped into it.

Encourage children to come up with their own experiments and games – perhaps they will trace the edge of a puddle and measure by the day or hour how quickly it takes to evaporate. If kids haven’t spent a lot of time outdoors in the rain, they may range from timid to wild; try the experience a few times so they can get used to exploring the rainy world.

Snake Deer Eagle Nature Walk

This walk encourages children to look around and notice things they may otherwise not have notices as they are moving from one place to the next. You can play this game along a nature trail but you can also do this while walking along a street, playing at the park, moving through a museum, or even while in a store.

Start off by explaining to your children that they are going to take an animal-eye view of the area as they travel along the way from one place to the next. Ask them where snakes, deer, and eagles focus their attention. Snakes slither along the ground, getting their view of life from that level. Deer see things from human eye level. Eagles see things well above our heads and even look down on us.

As you walk, call out “snake,” “deer,” or “eagle.” The kids stop for ten seconds and look down, straight ahead, or up (depending on the animal that you called). They then call out something that they see from that angle. The important part is to stop walking so you don’t bump into a tree, another person, fire hydrants, etc.

If you have two or more kids with you they, along with you, can take turns calling out the names of the three animals. Although you can randomly call out and have kids stop to discover what they will notice, you can also notice something interesting, say on the floor, and call out, “snake.” If kids don’t notice what you noticed, you can again call out “snake,” prompting kids to look around a bit more.

This game shouldn’t slow your walk much, even though the kids stop for a few seconds. You can change the names of the animals to suit your child’s interests or the area you are investigating.

Secret Squirrel

Originally published 4/09/2011 at explorealongtheway.com

You can have kids do this activity in your backyard on their own. (If you live in a city, you can take them to a park.) Ask them to spy on the local wildlife. By local wildlife, I mean squirrels, birds, snakes, lizards, spiders, or whatever other non-threatening animals the kids are likely to find in at home. If neither you nor the kids are certain what animals are out there, then the kids will need to go on a scouting mission.

Depending on your children’s temperament, they can transform themselves into spies, wildlife biologists, or nature photographers. They can decide what they will need with them to complete their mission.

Encourage the kids to dress in colors that will allow them to camouflage with the natural surroundings. Many diurnal (daytime) animals can see in color since daylight allows them to determine if food, such as berries, are ripe. Kids should also take a mechanical pencil (no worries about dull points) and notepad with them and/or bring their camera.

Now, if kids have only ever paid attention to wild animals moving around in enclosures and exhibits, they may not know what to expect from the critters in their backyard. Before heading outside, ask the kids how the animals would respond to a creature or two running around the yard and making a lot of noise. If the kids agree that everything, including a few amoebas, would go into hiding, then ask them how they should behave.

Sneaking, walking on tiptoe, walking slowly, freezing in place, hiding, using peripheral vision (looking out the corner of one’s eyes), being quiet, etc. are all good behaviors for encouraging animals to behave as if those wild humans aren’t suddenly going to start snacking on chickadees.

On a scouting mission, the kids’ job is to find out what animals are moving around in their yard during the day. They should sit or stand in one corner of the yard for five-to-ten minutes; afterwards, move to another corner. Kids should repeat moving to other locations as desired. Kids can take notes, describing what they see, where they see it, and what the creatures were doing.

Kids can use these notes for another expedition, this time focusing on one of the animals. Their goal for this more specific exploration is to observe and record five different behaviors of this animal. It is a bit of a thrill to get animals that normally shy away from humans to act as if you aren’t there and go about their normal activities.

Children and Nature v Parental Rules

Originally published 3/03/2011 at explorealongtheway.com


I was never an outdoor sort of kid while growing up. Yes, I spent time outdoors but my mother never wanted my brother or me to stray far from the house. We could ride our bikes up and down a stretch of our street but no further unless our father was with us. If we didn’t ride past the house at regular intervals, mom would call for us. If we wanted to play with the neighbor a few houses up the street, we had to let her know.

I’m 45 years old. I grew up in a safe suburb. When I read Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods a few years ago or I listen to people who teach in the environmental field talk about the wonderful times they had in nature, I don’t entirely understand their experiences. However, when people talk about children’s disconnection from nature, I better understand – my parents didn’t want me wandering through the woods or getting dirty.

I remember one day a girl from the neighborhood raking the leaves in the front yard into a pile. My family got home from errands and we were baffled by the pile of leaves. When the girl showed up and announced that her efforts were so the kids in the neighborhood could jump in the leaf pile, my father discarded the idea. Yes, if we played in the leaves, they would have scattered everywhere and dad would have had to rake, but if the neighborhood girl hadn’t made a pile of leaves we would have been raking them anyway. I don’t really recall ever jumping in a pile of leaves.

Another neighbor had a quarter acre of land, most which was field. We could see the line where a fire had burnt much of the land years ago. I didn’t know about field succession, how plants grow back after a patch of disturbed land is left alone; but the place was magically different than any other yard in the neighborhood. We had a “house” formed by staghorn sumac that grew over our heads. (I only learned the name of the shrub in my 30s when I started working in the environmental field.) This connection to nature fell within my parents’ parameters, although I was forever getting in trouble for not returning home when the expected me.

I entered the environmental field by accident. My parents weren’t happy with the choice – why didn’t I work in medical billing or as an accountant or for the post office? I’ve come to believe that even without a childhood filled with jumping in leaf piles and catching fireflies that it is possible to learn to truly see and appreciate nature. These are my steps along a forest path ….

Seeing Nature

Originally published 2/27/2011 at explorealongtheway.com

If you don’t know anything about nature can you really explore the outdoors with your children or students?

Appreciating nature is about much more than identifying the naming the things around you. When I walk through a local park I’ll often walk along testing my so-so tree identification skills. However, when I do, I miss seeing the trees. Instead, I focus on leaf shapes, branching, and bark – the tree is reduced to parts and a name.

When I don’t care about identification I see shapes of trees. I see the way the wind plays with the leaves. I better appreciate the colors and textures of the leaves and the bark of those trees. I notice buds, the play of light, and the sound of the wind rustling the leaves. I am certain that trees generate different sounds but I lack the ear to discern such variations.

Am I suggesting that there is no value to identification? No. But if we zip by something, naming it (correctly or incorrectly), without really seeing the uniqueness of that sycamore or that white ash, what have we experienced?

Do this – go outside with your children and pick up something they can hold in their hand. One person looks at the object and names something they can observe. Pass that same object to another person who holds up the item and describes another feature. If you are with one child, pass the object back and forth; if you are with a group, pass the object to different people.

Look at the object from the top, the bottom, each side (if there are sides), from different angles so two views are seen at once. Hold the object close to the face. Look at it from a distance. Name its colors. Smell the object. Rub it against your cheek or your wrist. How many different ways can you and your child (or children) view that pine cone, sea shell, piece of bark, etc.

If you are doing this activity with a group, switch objects when your observations of one item are exhausted. What happens if you suggest to a child who says that there is no other way to describe an object that there is one more way to look at the item?

This activity develops observation and creative thinking skills. Try it with a variety of objects found in different places.

Nature and Kids - Been There, Seen That?

Originally published 2/24/2011

For kids who don’t spend a lot of time exploring nature, the outdoors may be a place that they associate with a “been there, seen that” attitude. Some of the kids that I lead on field trips at Moose Hill Wildlife Sanctuary will sigh with exasperation, “I’ve already walked on this trail. Can we go another way?”

When I ask them when they’ve been to Moose Hill in the past they often respond with a month or a season other than the one they are in at that moment. Do they think that they will have the same experience in May that they had in March of the previous year? If they went to Disney World, maybe; but nature is more than a scenic attraction.

Yesterday I saw wild turkeys along this trail; today I notice the catkins of the yellow birch are opening. (Catkins are flexible stalks of flowers that look like caterpillars but can waggle like the tail of a displeased feline.) If you walk the same path everyday you will notice something different each day.

We (adults and children) need to learn to not just look at nature but to see it. Do this – pick a small spot that you and your children can visit each day. This location can be in your backyard or along your street. It could be a small tree lining a city street. Go to this spot each day for thirty-or-sixty-seconds, more time if you have it.

Look at this place and tell yourself to find something different today than you did yesterday. It isn’t “cheating” to say, “Well, yesterday the branches were wet because it had rained at night and today the branches are dry.” That is an observation.

Notice the textures – feel the bud at the tip of a branch each day as it gets a little plumper and then opens. Feel the leaves as they change from tiny wrinkled things to smooth, expansive leaves. Notice how long it takes for that to happen.

Are the sounds different? Do you hear birds chirping from where you are standing? Compare the rustle of leaves to the rattling of bare branches. Notice the smell of the damp earth or the exhaust from the truck that just drove by.

This micro-exploration doesn’t take a lot of time and has a game-like quality to it. Noticing a change in nature is a bit like those “Can you spot the differences?” pictures where you compare two images and observe that the little girl isn’t holding an ice cream cone in both drawings. Only this observation game shows you the wonders of nature.